8 Sep
08:22
Jamali Maddix gets the run of Hackney Empire’s 1,275 seats
The Hackney Empire holds 1,275 people. On Thursday 22 October it hands the lot of them over to a fictional pirate radio station from Brentford.…
Open Comedy Newsroom
Page 5
The running order
6 Sep
20:47
BBC New Comedy Awards heats put 30 comics on six free Coventry shows
Thirty acts, six shows, and doors at six on a Tuesday Thirty comics will play six shows across three nights this month, in a shed…
6 Sep
12:55
Fringe says no to moving 2027, schools go back on 18 August
Susie McCabe had read the same press release as everyone else. “However, I would counter that with yes the front end of the Fringe was…
5 Sep
07:38
How to do crowd work without wrecking your own set
Jeff Arcuri’s crowd work started because he ran out of jokes at sea. “It really started when I started doing cruise ships,” he told A…
5 Sep
07:37
Banana Cabaret’s Balham room reopens at £20 with no lineup refunds
“Not sure why we didn’t have a compere,” Dave Vickers told Chortle in January. He was describing a booking habit that survived four decades in…
3 Sep
20:12
Fringe artist fund falls to £40,000 and comics top up the prizes
The Keep it Fringe fund paid 180 Edinburgh artists £2,500 each in 2025, a total of £450,000. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport put…
3 Sep
19:56
The Comedy Poster Awards finally pay in cash, not flyers
The firm putting money behind this year’s poster prize explained itself in a single sentence. It’s a sentence with a fight in it. “In a…
3 Sep
09:04
47 MPs sign the grassroots comedy letter, 16 more couldn’t
Sixteen MPs wanted to put their names on the Live Comedy Association’s letter to the Culture Secretary and weren’t allowed to. Parliamentary protocol, apparently, which…
1 Sep
06:29
How to write a clean comedy set that still gets laughs
Jim Gaffigan once explained his whole approach using a box of doughnuts. “It’s not really necessary to curse when you’re discussing doughnuts,” he told the…
1 Sep
05:43
Fringe sold 2.8m tickets and Assembly still wants the dates moved
“It’s the last Friday of the Fringe and people are sitting with half-full rooms,” Susie McCabe posted in the closing days of August. By the…